soldier story
by Lavender Flame
Summary: Cinna and Portia's lives as District Thirteen soldiers, from their first day of training to their last day alive, spanning ten years, District and Capitol.
1. Hell Day

**Author's Note: This is being written primarily for the One Million Added Words Competition on Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges. It's the love story of my OTP as soldiers. Thank you for reading, and please review!**

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_soldier story_

_Chapter One: Hell Day_

_Monday, July 1__st__, Games Year 65_

_Dining Hall, District Thirteen, Panem_

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It was Hell Day.

The first day of real soldier training that started at age fourteen, that was, which had earned its nickname from generations past.

In District Thirteen—"The District", to most of its residents—the dining hall, everything gray and metallic, buzzed with quiet talking, and Cinna and Portia's families sat at the same table as assigned for breakfast, 0700, in mostly awkward quiet.

Portia couldn't eat. She knew she'd need the energy later, but it would never be enough, anyway, and right now she felt sick looking at the usual mush on her plate. She'd never finish it.

Cinna held her hand lightly in his under the table, running his thumb back and forth, soothing her. "Hell Day," he whispered to her, unnecessarily. His voice was toneless but she knew that he was nervous, too. Cinna only made small talk when he was nervous.

"Obviously," she whispered back.

He eyed her still-almost-full tray, seemingly as a distraction. "You should eat," he said gently, sounding more like her father than her best friend. "I'm guessing you'd regret not doing so later."

"Yes, _sir._" She rolled her eyes subtly and he kicked her under their bunch, playful. She resumed pretending to eat, clumsy with her left hand. But her right was in Cinna's, the schedule on her arm reading:

_PORTIA RENAE ADALINE_

_0630 – Lights On, Prepare_

_0700 – Breakfast_

_0730 – Training_

_1230 – Lunch_

_1300 – Training_

_1730 – Lecture_

_1800 – Reflection_

_1830 – Dinner_

1900 – Personal Time

_2200 – Bathing_

_2230 – Lights Out, Sleep_

Cinna's hand was his left, so his schedule wasn't on that arm, although she knew that it was the same, except that it was under _CINNA TIMEUS BENECY_. And he didn't need it to eat, with it being his bad hand, and with him already being almost finished with his breakfast, because Cinna was the good one and that was what he did.

But Portia's parents had barely been able to get her out of her room. Fifteen minutes prior to thirty minutes prior, as she would say, the lights had gone on, the alarm had sounded, and she had… not moved. Just her eyes opened. And she stayed like that for several minutes, except for moving her arm to get her purple schedule, an automatic move for a schedule she already knew.

"Are you awake?" Her father rapped on her door. "I don't hear moving! And it's a big day; you can't be late!"

"I'm awake; I won't be late," she called back, and finally forced herself up, and made her bed, carefully, slowly, as usual, but with her hands trembling.

Then she stood and stared at her gray uniform, the same color as her eyes, now complete with a new tracker-bracelet, for several more minutes.

This time her mother called through the door. "Make sure you hurry!"

"I am," she again called back.

Finally she dressed and put up her recently-cut-short, straight, dark brown hair, before going to brush her teeth and wash her face—

"—0725," Cinna whispered in the present moment. "Are you not going to finish eating?"

She stared down at her tray. "I think I'm going to throw up what I _did_ eat," she got out, shaking her head.

"Most people do, on Hell Day," he deadpanned, and excused himself to return both of their trays, his empty.

As he returned, a bell sounded. "Ready?"

"As I ever will be."

Both of their pairs of parents looked at their own child. "Good luck," Portia's mother said. Her father only nodded, and they both walked out of a cafeteria door. Cinna's parents followed, after briefly speaking to him.

Cinna and Portia went through a different door with the other grim-looking trainees.

When they arrived in the correct training gym, closed off, and the next bell toll had ended, just the trainees and the sergeants, the Hell descended. "_FALL IN!_" came the first screamed order.

They scrambled into long rows with the length of the gym and shorter columns with the width, a sergeant in front of each one, everyone equidistant from each other.

"_DROP AND GIVE ME NINETY, CADETS!_"

Portia cringed a little. And in a flurry of movement, everyone did as they were told.

But Portia'd never been really good at pushups. Not the "real" ones. She wasn't really athletic. She didn't pretend to be. She was a perfect student but her arms had already started to shake.

The sergeants started to move through the room, correcting form and speed with gray canes. Portia groaned, certain that they were going to reach her and Cinna's part of the room soon.

She was sure that her arms were going to give out, trembling violently. She looked over at Cinna next to her. "_We're going to die,"_ she mouthed, and Cinna only nodded.

There was just so much _screaming_ around her, and she was sure that ninety was an arbitrary number—they kept making people start again, or adding more, with the cracks of the canes.

She swore several times mentally when one sergeant stopped by her. "_YOU CALL THOSE PUSHUPS, CADET?!"_

She didn't know what to say, and couldn't breathe, besides, heart racing. Whatever she was doing, she felt exhausted already.

The cane cracked down on her, what felt like a line of fire rising, burning. She closed her eyes for a second.

She had no idea what her count was.

"_KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT!_"

"Yes, sir," she panted, and tried to move.

"_I CAN'T HEAR YOU, CADET!"_

"Yes, sir!" she repeated, as loudly as she could at the moment. The cane came down again. Portia hissed, not audible over the noise of the room.

"_START YOUR COUNT OVER!"_

"Yes, sir! One…!"

The sergeant walked away. Another one was tormenting Cinna at the moment.

She tried to not think about the pain, and how much she wanted water, and air. She tried to think about _anything _else.

Feeling close to fainting or, indeed, vomiting, she was getting close to ninety again—everyone was still working—and her arms were visibly shaking, barely able to support her, slipping against the floor with sweat. She'd never stay in position at this rate.

"_GET UP, CADETS! … ATTENTION!_"

Portia struggled to her feet, the room spinning in one-eighty turns around her. But through the blur, her vision starting to go dark at the edges, she realized that the crowd had thinned. On the sides of the rooms, on medical floor-beds, there were the cadets who actually _had_ fainted.

"_TWENTY LAPS AROUND THE GYM, CADETS!"_

Her body started running before her mind caught up, and the room did a full spin. But at least she didn't have to do much with her arms, now. And the sergeants were starting to flick the canes at the people who were the slowest.

Portia was dragging her feet and almost ran into the wall at every turn, thinking she was more blue than red in the face from a lack of oxygen, choking on the urge to be sick from exertion and the pain. During the fourth lap she started to stumble, her vision really starting to go out, but someone caught her before she hit the floor and started to half-drag her forward, pretending to jog. Cinna. Of course.

He really didn't look much better, himself.

"I can't do this," she whimpered, no real sound actually coming out since she couldn't breathe and her throat was raw.

"Yes, you can." He tugged on her arm, and she reluctantly started to run again.

Lap six. She felt like she'd made no progress at all, and it felt like her lungs had collapsed while she wheezed, all of her nerves on fire.

The other cadets were dropping like flies. Fainting, or throwing up too much, and so being taken off to the side.

She lost Cinna on lap nine. He fainted too quickly for her to stop, and was being moved before she could even process, being close to unconscious, herself.

But somehow, she kept dragging herself around the room. Lap eleven. They were all just becoming a blur, and everything seemed dull. She couldn't hear the screaming anymore; it was just a distant roar in her ears, and she felt as if her body were numb.

Finishing lap sixteen, she was starting to believe that she could actually make it, by some miracle. She became determined. By lap eighteen, she was almost sure. There were very few people left. On lap twenty she felt only _relief, _knowing that this part would be over soon, unaware of her surroundings, and she sprinted across the designated "finish" line… to promptly faint.

.

She woke up what apparently wasn't that long later. Just a few minutes. There was a canteen next to her, and she started gulping down the cool water. Her breathing had steadied out while she was unconscious, and the pain was much less immediate.

When she was fully aware for some solid seconds, she heard more screaming. _That_ was more immediate, now. "_TO THE OBSTACLE COURSE, CADETS!"_

She forced herself up and fell in to the group going to the obstacle course, next to Cinna. They were allowed to talk. "They said only three finished," he said. "And that they all fainted a few seconds after. So they just waited for everyone to be ready to go. Who do you think the three were?"

"Well, I was the first," she said. She really hadn't noticed who the other two were. They must have been behind her. So she must've finished first. She realized it as she said it.

Cinna stared at her.

"What?" she asked, curious what he would say.

"It's… kind of a big deal, is all."

Portia shrugged. "Embrace the suck," she said, with half of a grim smile. Everything still hurt, and she was dreading the obstacle course.

"It _did _suck," he replied, not as seriously as he could have.

"What are you whining about? I did eleven more laps than you. That's twice as many and then some."

He pouted at her, playful again.

The group came to a stop before the obstacle course. It was Portia's turn to stare. Every part of her body hurt _way_ too much to _possibly_ make it to the other side of this.

But the sergeants spread out along the side of the course, and the closest one ordered, "_GET GOING, CADETS! THE LAST SEVEN THROUGH WILL DO IT AGAIN! IF YOU COMPLETE AN OBSTACLE THE WRONG WAY, YOU'LL DO IT FIVE MORE TIMES! NOW, MOVE!"_

Portia_ did_ move, ran over the mock-muddy ground for the first obstacle, a climbing wall, shooting pain going through her legs, and then her arms, when she started to climb, reaching for a handhold above her and pulling enough for her feet to reach the first holds, and repeating the process, also repeating, _Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down,_ mentally.

She tried to breathe.

The next handhold was a bit far away, and she had to lift one foot to be able to reach it, heart pounding until she held onto it tightly with a sweaty, shaky hand, and got her foot onto another hold. She moved one foot, then the other, one hand, one foot, the other foot, the other hand.

Then she was at the top, and she awkwardly crawled over it, realizing that on the other side, there were no holds, just a flat wall and enough ropes for everyone. So she gripped her rope tightly with two hands, braced her feet on the wall, and, trying to not start hyperventilating again, started to walk backwards down the wall, keeping her tight hold on the rope until she reached the ground.

At which point she ran again, almost slipping on the mud, this time reaching a balance beam that she moved fairly quickly across, arms going out to her sides, moving one foot out to the side and then in front of the other.

When she had an actual goal, it seemed easier. But her limbs were really starting to hurt even more.

She ran and forced herself over two short, smooth climbing walls, just scrambling over them. She kept getting cuts from the edges, which burned, and bruises from bumping things. The end of the course seemed nowhere in sight.

She reached a leopard-crawl area still in the mud and dropped to the ground on her elbows and knees, realizing how sore her joints and palms were in her arms, moving her left arm and right leg and then right arm and left leg to crawl under the wires, through the mud. Someone near her was pulled out for doing the wrong type of crawl.

And there were always, always the canes for the slowest ones. But she'd managed to avoid those.

Portia hated crawling, and hoped that Cinna wasn't watching her. But then again, everyone would now be equally soaked and covered in mud. She'd heard that this was what the Block was like—an actual simulation. That this was the closest to a practice run-through they would get in the obstacle course. So maybe she should've tried to think more relevant thoughts.

She finally managed to wriggle out the end area, and now the running was miserable, her uniform heavier and smacking against her aching body.

The next was a ropes course, going up high, then having a bridge, then going down on the other side.

She hurt more just _looking_ at it, as she started to climb, hating the unsteadiness of the rope squares. But at least there were more slots for her feet as opposed to small holds to try to balance on, and she had something better to hold on to. But the whole thing swayed. She kept getting tangled, and was getting major rope burn, which stung like _hell_, and before she was too high up, a sergeant swatted her with a cane because she almost fell from the tangling.

She finally got to the top, and realized that even if this part wasn't as much work, she hated it even more—the whole ground moving underneath her. At least there was a net here. A lot of people had fallen. A few had fainted or just vomited too much again already.

Portia felt stronger in those regards. Her heart pounded, adrenaline coursing through her veins, but she also breathed heavily with stabbing pain running through her body with the adrenaline.

She got down the other side safely, relieved to be off the ropes until she saw the last obstacle—a hand-held-only zip-line to the end. She climbed up the few ladder steps, and then, with her rope-burned, sweaty, shaky, sore-from-the-ground-and-handholds palms, gripped the zip-line, tilted her body back, and then jumped and swung herself forwards. She went _flying_ down it, oddly fast considering its fairly low height, until it stopped abruptly and in panic, she let go of it, and it catapulted her through the air until she hit the ground, _hard,_ at a sergeant's feet at the end.

Someone else who she didn't know well and thought she'd seen faint during the running had finished at the exact same time. There was no one else ahead of them.

So she was tied for first, and she had not been stopped once.

Maybe determination _could_ get her through this.

Although, right then, everything just _hurt. _Her racing heart _hurt,_ her attempts to breathe _hurt, _her arms and legs _hurt, _her throat _hurt._

They were told to stand and wait until everyone finished. They were not given water or allowed out of the mud. Much to Portia's disappointment. "_Standby to standby,_" as the sergeant said. As everyone _always _said.

Cinna finished not too far behind her, in the same state, so they were able to talk in the meantime. "What's with you?" he asked. "Being all… all…?"

"Good at everything?" she asked between breaths, attitude coming with her exhaustion, but only with Cinna. Her heart rate and breathing, at least, had started to even out, since she caught up while they talked.

"I wouldn't call it that," he half-smirked at her.

It was her turn to kick him, but lightly, because he was in pain, too.

When the last ones still going through the course finished, the last seven were taken back through with other sergeants, and the rest of the group went with different sergeants into a clearing to stretch.

She thought that it was an odd place for it, but it was called _Hell Day,_ not, _Do Things in the Right Order Day. _The stretches hurt. Oddly enough, the stretches themselves hurt more than anything yet. Having to try to extend and contract all of her sore muscles was painful. And she got four total swats with the cane for not doing things with the right arm or leg, although everyone did, at some point.

By the time the group was done, her torso hurt, too. _Well, we can cross that off the short list of "Things That Don't Hurt"._

At various points the sergeant leading them would call out questions while they were holding a painful stretch for a long time. "_WHAT IS OUR MOTTO, CADETS?!"_

"_Succedunt omnino gratuita_, ma'am!" _Succeed at all costs._

"_WHAT IS OUR PLEDGE, CADETS?!"_

… It went on and on, it seemed.

But finally they were ordered back into the gym, fell in, and then they were group-voluntold to clean their remaining puke off of the floors. _"Gee, it sure would be nice if y'all would tidy the vomitus on the floor."_

So that was how she ended up next to Cinna, sitting on her sore legs on the hard floor, scrubbing the fresh puke of the unfortunate people around her out of the ground, burned palms pressing against a scratchy washcloth. Anyone who complained or stopped or didn't do a good enough job—the puke was stubborn about coming out of the floor—or worked too slowly were immediately given the cane.

Because cleaning a recently-puked version of her own breakfast, from her fellow tormented trainees who were right there, off the floor when every part of her body hurt, was an excellent way to spend the morning, while she was still temped to puke, herself, from dehydration.

This one was just messing with their minds. Although there were occasional screams of "_DROP AND GIVE ME FIFTY, CADETS!_", followed by the same routine as the first part of the morning. These only wore her out further.

_Embrace the suck…. __Succedunt omnino gratuita._

At least she'd stayed out of the ways of the canes for this part, unlike most of the others.

Their task was declared done for them at some point.

Portia prayed that they would let them have a drink of water. It was only healthy.

But except for those on the medical beds, who didn't get to stay there long, no one got water. Instead they were told to do sets of fifty sit-ups and then five laps and then sixty pushups until they were told to stop. And again the sergeants went around to correct proper form and speed, but Portia again never caught their eye. Thank Panem for that.

The sets were painful because for the first time with the physical exercises, there was no sort of end to look forward to. There was no sense of hope. And while the exercises started to become a blur again, her heart pounded and raced, her breathing became short and shallow if it came at all to her burning lungs, every single part of her ached, her raw throat throbbed, and her vision again started to go out, turning black.

But she made sure to keep her back straight on the pushups. She made sure she didn't use her feet or hands in the sit-ups. She genuinely ran as fast as she felt she could when she had to run, which was becoming her least favorite part. Her abdomen felt like it'd been punched multiple times from doing the sit-ups, and she wondered how long it would be like this for, how many unbearable days.

She prayed and apologized mentally to no-one for her pride over how she'd done earlier, then tried to use it as an "I deserve a break" thing, then offered any sort of bargain on other days, tried thinking about all sorts of nice things, in the hope that it would somehow get her out of this.

_Oww oww oww oww I want air, I want water, I want everything to stop hurting, please, I can't do this, I don't want to do this, I think I'm dying, I don't want to die, please just let it _end.

But finally, finally, the order came to stop. There was another: "_GET UP, CADETS! … ATTENTION! REPORT TO THE DINING HALL FOR LUNCH AND RETURN HERE AT 1300! DISMISSED!_"

All clearly grateful, the cadets started to filter out of the room for the dining hall. Portia again found Cinna, and he intertwined their hands, but they were both still too much in-recovery to speak on the whole walk to the dining hall, catching up on breathing.

By the time they had their lunches and were seated with their parents at their table, they could both breathe, and they'd both gulped down their drinks.

"How did your morning go?" asked Cinna's mother.

They both looked at each other. Their thoughts were coming a bit slowly through all the pain.

"All right, ma'am," Cinna said quietly, after a few seconds.

Then there was an odd silence, and Portia thought that now she felt starving, but her arms were so tired she didn't want to make them move to eat. She squirmed on the bench.

"Well?" Cinna's father asked. "Details, details."

"It was…." He looked over at Portia, trying to put it into words.

"Painful," she finished for him.

The parents all nodded. "Did you faint?" asked Cinna's father.

They both nodded.

"Did you throw up?"

They both shook their heads.

"That's probably coming up."

_Great._ "A lot of other people did," Portia offered.

Cinna gave a basic synopsis of what they'd done.

"And who were the overachievers? You know, who did the best?" asked Portia's father.

Cinna nodded in Portia's direction.

"Out of everyone?"

Portia decided it was a good moment to eat and Cinna nodded again. He again started summarizing, but instead all of Portia's achievements in the morning.

"Well, I'll be damned," said her father.

She looked at all of the adults who were now giving her a strange look and tried to figure out how to respond. Not the same way she had to Cinna. But…. "I think I should be offended that you're so surprised," she tried finally, mostly because she was tired.

Her father gave her a look. "It would be a surprise for anyone, really. I'm going to go tell all the other parents." And with that, he started to walk around the dining hall.

When Portia then gave her mother a bit of a look, her mother only shrugged and said, "Your father's always been competitive."

"Well, I'm proud of you two," said Cinna's mother.

"Thank you, ma'am."

At that point, everyone had finished eating, so Cinna put away their trays, and returned. Portia's father had also come back to the table. While they waited for the bell, there was a bit more of absent talking about the changes to the obstacle course since their parents were cadets, and all.

Then there was the bell. They said their goodbyes, and Cinna and Portia went back to the training gym, the doors closing behind them with the next bell, and the trainees faced the sergeants in formation again.

Portia tried to keep breathing.

They waited.

"_REPORT TO THE MACHINE ROOM, CADETS! NOW!"_

They scrambled through the doors into an adjoining room that was filled with exercise machines. There were leg presses, leg extensions, overhead stack machines, bikes, treadmills, ellipticals, step-mills… five of each, so there was one for each of the cadets.

"_YOU WILL ROTATE THROUGH THE DIFFERENT MACHINES IN GROUPS OF FIVE AS I CALL TIME! GET ON YOUR FIRST MACHINES NOW!"_

Everyone again scrambled around, and Cinna and Portia ended up on two step-mill machines next to each other.

"_BEGIN!"_

Portia turned the machine on, and the small staircase started moving downwards. And she dragged herself up the steps as they moved out from under her.

She suddenly remembered just how much her legs hurt from the morning. As she started panting again, she kept thinking that they would be told to rotate, but the order didn't come. Her breathing wasn't helped by the fact that she clenched her teeth against the pain—it was only growing worse, stabbing, shooting, throbbing agony.

She looked down at the stairs, letting her head hang, starting to pray again.

"_CADET!" _one of the sergeants yelled from behind her, and struck her with the cane.

She snapped up from her half-asleep state. "Yes, ma'am?"

"_YOU CAN'T GO INTO BATTLE LIKE THAT! HAVE SOME PRIDE, CADET!"_

"Yes, ma'am!"

She tried to keep herself upright.

The sergeant hit some buttons on her machine to make the stairs move faster, and then walked away. _"Oww,_" she mouthed at Cinna, who just winced in sympathy.

Now it just hurt more. _It will always get worse._

And when she was sure that she should've collapsed several minutes before, they were ordered to rotate, so Cinna and Portia went to the bike machines and sat. They were ordered to begin once again.

Portia was certain her legs were going to fall off, even though that wasn't actually possible.

And it did get worse. Next was the elliptical, where she had to move in a circular sort of motion, up and down and up and down…. And the room started to spin again. It felt like it was about ten-thousand degrees, and she felt sick, tasting salt in her mouth.

When everything really started to go out, she jumped off the elliptical, raced over to the side of the room and threw up into one of the buckets there for all of the various people who got sick. Cinna hadn't even had time to react before she went back to the elliptical. She shook her head at him. "I'm fine," she lied, although it got mostly drowned in the screaming in the room.

Mostly she didn't want to catch the sergeants' eyes. But she felt somewhat better now, too. Well, still in a lot of pain, but better.

She got back on the elliptical and started to move again, as slowly as she dared, much as she dreaded it. Soon there was another call to rotate.

This time they were at the overhead stack machines, pulling a bar down from above them, which at least targeted a different area. Not that her arms didn't still hurt horribly from the morning.

And after another long time, they went to the leg extension station, where she had to push up a bar with her legs, which made her unreasonably paranoid about them snapping. Then the leg press, which was an awkwardly curled-up position where she had to push a plate out with her feet. But so far, it was one of the least-terrible ones, along with the stack machine. On the other hand, that was where Cinna, too, ended up getting sick.

She saw a glimmer of hope when they got to the treadmills, which were their last ones. It was somewhere between thirty and forty minutes before Lecture, so she knew it would be their last station overall.

But that still seemed like a long time.

Towards the end she was starting to almost-fall back off of the treadmill too many times, apparently, because a sergeant again came up behind her, shouting, "_CADET, DO YOU KNOW HOW TO USE A TREADMILL?!"_

"Yes, sir!"

"_THEN ACT LIKE IT!" _He smacked her with the cane twice, making Portia clench her hands into fists, and moved on. Cinna offered a pitying expression even though he hadn't gotten through the stations without correction, either. No one had.

Finally 1730 came. They were ordered into the Lecture Hall, and they all took their seats. One sergeant took their place at the front of the room.

Portia looked at Cinna next to her, and he looked back, both wondering what the sergeant was going to say.

And then the screaming started.

And the screamed insults continued for a straight half hour. No one moved.

"_THIS GROUP HAS HAD THE MOST PATHETIC FIRST TRAINING DAY THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN! NO EFFORT, NONE FROM YOU!"_

Eventually they were allowed to get away from the deafening abuse. "_DISMISSED!"_

Everyone all but ran out into the hallway. Cinna and Portia both lingered. "Is this going to be our life from now on?" she whispered, close to tears.

Cinna didn't answer. He just took her hand again. "I'll walk you home," he said gently, and, slowly from pain and exhaustion, started to head for Portia's family's compartment.

She walked with him in silence, until she choked out, "I don't know if I can do this every day."

"We'll get through it," he said, and squeezed her hand. Even that hurt.

When they got to her family's compartment door, her mother opened it, and said, "Oh, you must be exhausted." She looked mostly at Cinna. "Come in, come in."

They did, and her mother shut the door behind them. "I just want to… lie down," Portia said, and rather abruptly left for her room.

Her mother looked at Cinna as though he could explain this. "She's a bit upset," he said. "I'll go talk to her."

Portia's mother nodded and so Cinna went to find Portia, who was now curled up on her bed, crying. He left the door open and attempted to sit by her side, but in his own exhaustion ended up falling to mostly-lie next to her.

"I'm so tired," she whispered between sobs. "Everything hurts. And we have to do it all over again tomorrow."

He brushed a few loose strands of hair away from her face, away from the tears, and murmured, "I know," his eyes starting to flutter shut, because Portia wasn't the only tired one.

She wept more, and suddenly it was all he could do to nuzzle her hair soothingly, before they both fell asleep.


	2. Day Two

**Author's Note: Thanks again for reading, and please review!**

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_soldier story_

_Chapter Two: Day Two_

_Tuesday, July 2__nd__, Games Year 65_

_Training Gym, District Thirteen, Panem_

* * *

It was Day Two.

Yesterday, Portia had thought that everything hurt. Today, she thought that everything was _killing her._ She felt as if she'd been put through a giant blender set to butcher, being torn into thousands of little pieces and then shoved roughly back was agony, everything throbbing as if a burning thousand-pound weight were attached to each of her nerves.

And it was only the start of the day. The sergeants and cadets, fallen into formation, were in the closed training gym after the bell, just waiting.

Portia wasn't sure how long she could take the waiting. Yesterday had been quite possibly the worst day of her life, and now she was preparing to immediately face it again. She really, _really_ didn't want to. She'd rather be _anywhere_ else, with _anyone _other than the sergeants, doing _anything_ else—

"—_TWENTY-FIVE LAPS AROUND THE GYM, CADETS!_"

They all moved to the front edge of the gym and then ran. Portia knew the best thing to do was pace herself but still instinctually took off at a near-sprint to avoid the sergeants trailing the slowest cadets with canes like birds hunting prey.

Moving her legs felt as if she were breaking glass, so she tried to move with as minimal flexibility as humanly possible, though the sergeants didn't seem to care about what was _humanly possible. _She barely lifted her feet from the ground, moving lightly.

Quickly growing thirsty as she panted for air, by the start of the fifth lap, she looked over at Cinna roughly next to her and, between breaths, told him, "I think I'm gonna kill myself."

"I don't blame you," he said mock-seriously.

At this point, while they ran, they both half-turned around at the sound of the first person to throw up doing so. In the process of turning back, Portia suddenly felt the dizziness hit her and felt tempted to be sick, herself.

"Is it about a thousand degrees in here?" she asked him.

"Approximately," he got out.

She had a pounding headache that she had a bad feeling wouldn't go away.

It seemed to be taking a very long time. More of them fainted. _"RUN FASTER—THAT'S BARELY A JOG!" _the screaming continued. Or, at a specific person, "_YOU—THREE MORE LAPS! YOU'LL DO THEM ALL AGAIN IF YOU CAN'T DO BETTER THAN THAT!" _And again Portia felt everything start to become dull, vision coming in dark flashes, barely there around the edges, the screaming flattened as if coming through a tunnel, the pain distanced as if it were from a long time ago.

On lap eleven, it was Cinna's turn to start to stumble and run into walls, but Portia dragged him along as he had done for her.

She lost him on lap twelve, anyway.

"Why do I keep running?" she asked herself under her breath, but didn't answer the question. She still tried to think _embrace the suck_ and _succedunt omnino gratuita. _

Maybe she was just clinging to some stray hope that it became less horrible at some point, even though she knew better.

By lap twenty-three, she again had the feeling that she was going to be able to finish. It seemed important; it was a source of pride, now. There were only four other people left.

… Make that three other people left.

And she'd seen at least one of them being assigned more laps.

Everything seemed to have reached some limit that she couldn't feel any more, like it couldn't get any worse, as if she were stuck in some static state where she'd forgotten how to not keep running.

Sometime in the blur, she again crossed the "finish" line.

She didn't faint this time, but did fall to the ground, clutching it, as the room seemed to spin around and around. One of the sergeants stood over her, the only cadet in the room not unconscious, throwing up, or still running.

She couldn't make herself move. "I—hate you," she gasped out, still panting, knowing it was stupid but with the pain, she was feeling this _anger_ broiling in her. "You're all—sadists. This—is pointless—and cruel." Then, her air supply really ran out too much to talk and she went into a phase of just wheezing, and when she had more oxygen, she realized what she'd done and started swearing mentally. _I am so beyond dead._

"Get up," the sergeant said flatly, and pulled rather harshly on her arm. She stumbled to her feet. _So dead. So, so dead. _"Come with me."

She complied, cursing her own stupidity.

The sergeant led her to an office not far away, and closed the door. Her own shaking in fear hurt.

"Most of Basic Training is about respect and obedience," the sergeant said. This encounter was the first time in training Portia'd ever heard a sergeant speak without screaming, and it made her even more nervous. At least if they yelled, she could think it was the worst to come.

Now she wasn't so sure.

"You don't seem to have grasped this concept," the sergeant continued.

"I'm sorry, sir. I shouldn't have said those things. I don't think they're true." Portia looked at the floor just to not look at the sergeant, hoping he wouldn't notice her shaking. "I won't do that again."

"Nevertheless." The sergeant reached over the desk and pulled something out of a drawer—the dreaded wooden paddle. Portia'd been punished plenty with one by her parents, usually her father, as the universal system of The District went. "Come over here." She reluctantly shuffled closer to where the sergeant was, knowing that running or fighting was useless. "Turn around." She turned in a semi-circle so that her back was to him, waiting for each order. "Bend over." She did so. "Hands behind your back." She moved them, taking a second to find her balance, and the sergeant pinned them there harshly, making her flinch. "Do you remember the rules?"

"Mostly, sir." They were the same rules used by anyone in The District.

"I'll refresh your memory. If you move from this position or make any sound other than counting, I'll add ten more for every time you do. You're going to count each one, and say, 'Thank you, sir,' for each. If you lose count, we will begin again. After I'm done speaking, you will ask me to punish you. I'm going to give you seventy strokes for being disrespectful to your superior. Is that all understood?"

"Yes, sir. Please punish me, sir." She knew the speech well.

"Let's begin, then. Ready?"

"Yes, sir," she repeated.

She felt the paddle rest against her, and then it lifted, and she braced herself, before a _crack _ran through the room and a second later, she felt an intense sting on the left side. She bit back a cry, and her body tensed, breathing still subtly harsh. "One; thank you, sir."

Another, to the right, and another _crack_. It almost made her jolt forward a bit too much.

_Oww, that burns. _"Two; thank you, sir," she got out.

And another, left again. _Crack. _"Three; thank you, sir." She was feeling shaky again now.

Another stroke fell quickly, still alternating sides. "Four; thank you, sir." She clenched her hands together tightly behind her back, her whole body still tense and hurting. She tried to breathe. She could get through this.

There was a pause. Then, the next, the hardest yet. "Five; thank you, sir."

The sixth fell quickly. "Six; thank you, sir." Then another pause. _Crack._ "Seven; thank you, sir," she forced out, closing her eyes tightly for a second, toes curling as she tried to keep still. A particularly hard stroke fell lower, and it hurt more than the rest. It took her a second to say, "Eight; thank you, sir," breathing still somewhat unsteady.

The ninth seemed to take forever. Portia waited with bated breath for what felt like whole minutes before it fell. Then she clenched her hands even tighter, making them shake more. She wanted desperately to struggle, to avoid the punishing strokes or block them with her hands, straighten up, but she knew she couldn't, and she certainly didn't want any more. "Nine; thank you, sir."

The humiliation and shame were hitting her heard. … And, literally, the strokes were getting harder.

_Crack. _The tenth. She really hated the burn, the sting, the additional pain. _I really screwed up already, didn't I? _"Ten; thank you, sir."

It went on.

"Fifteen; thank you, sir. … Twenty; thank you, sir. … Thirty; thank you, sir. … Thirty-five; thank you, sir."

Then the sergeant paused. "Why are you receiving this punishment, cadet?"

She took in a breath, her heart beating faster. "Because I was disrespectful, sir."

"Are you going to be disrespectful again?"

"No, sir." She tried to resist the urge to plead for it to stop, holding back sniffles and tears.

The punishment resumed. She just wanted it to be over with. "Forty; thank you, sir. … Fifty; thank you, sir. … Sixty; thank you, sir. … Seventy; thank you, sir."

"Stand up, and turn around." She did so. "You will report here for a detention with me at 1900 until 2200 for your insolence. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," she almost whispered.

"For now, you should return to training. Go on."

"Yes, sir," she said yet again, and they both went back to the training gym. The group was just leaving again—for where, she didn't know, and given by the talk, it didn't seem that any of the other cadets knew, either.

"Where were you?" Cinna asked, concerned, when she fell in step with him.

She wasn't really in the mood to talk about it, the sting still there. "In an office," she muttered. "In trouble."

"For what?"

"I kind of mouthed off to one of the sergeants after I finished the laps." She put on the ending just to make it sound somewhat justified.

"So?" he asked curiously.

"So, what?"

"What happened?"

"What do you think happened?" Now she was starting to snap at him. "I got seventy and I have detention later."

His voice softened. "What were you 'mouthing off' about?"

She shrugged, shook her head. "About their sadism. I don't know."

"But you finished the laps first again. And didn't even faint this time."

"I guess," she mumbled, feeling unable to be happy about it. Everything still hurt from all the exercise, not to mention being punished.

But they arrived at their destination, apparently, and the group stopped.

It was nowhere, to Portia, just in a clearing of the woods. Distantly, she saw a flag flying above the treetops. "_YOUR GOAL IS TO REACH THAT FLAG AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE! YOU MAY NOT TOUCH THE GROUND AGAIN UNTIL THE END, SO YOU WILL BE LEARNING HOW TO CLIMB TREES! IF YOU DO TOUCH THE GROUND, OR ARE ONE OF THE LAST SEVEN TO FINISH, YOU WILL START AGAIN! YOU WILL BEGIN... NOW!" _

Portia really had no idea how to climb a tree, but she grabbed on to the nearest one and started to climb. She'd had to do the obstacle course yesterday, too. The bark was painful on her hands—she had the feeling she'd be picking splinters out for weeks, and it felt like sandpaper, especially over the rope burns and such from yesterday. She gripped branches to pull herself up, bracing her feet on the trunk of the tree, only occasionally having to use it to propel herself in the first place.

At a height where there was a strong branch of the next tree close by, she tentatively reached out to the side with one hand to grip a branch above that one, leaving her other hand on the branch of her current tree. Then she moved one foot over, and her other hand, and her other foot, until she was balancing herself on the tree branch, holding tightly to the branch above her.

She again transferred, first her hands and then her feet, to get around the trunk, up a bit, and to another branch, then to the next tree.

_Please don't let me fall, please don't let me fall, please don't let me fall._

She was starting to feel exerted again instead of just in pain. The woods seemed ominous, unfamiliar, and she heard someone fall not far away from her. She'd lost track of Cinna, and just hoped that it wasn't him, since she couldn't _see_ who it was.

She continued on carefully through the trees, as quickly as she could, but being careful not to fall. That was not her picture of the ideal death, nor did she feel like so much as getting injured any more right at the moment.

The flag seemed closer and closer, what she could see of it, and she was careful to watch what direction she was going. She felt more and more intent on finishing as she went on, moving faster and faster, but still feeling nervous.

And she was still so tired. But she tried to reason with herself—the faster she finished, the faster she could stop.

And soon, she reached the clearing with the high-flying flag. She moved her hands to a lower branch and then let her legs find another branch to support herself on, moved her hands again to a yet-lower branch, and repeated, until she was on the ground.

She was the second to finish, but the first person had apparently touched the ground, and so had to go start over. So, in that regard, she was first as usual. But even though she seemed to be excelling in training, it was still hellish, and it was her determination over any sort of ability that was getting her through it. And she apparently still needed to learn "respect and obedience". But her biggest problem at the moment was the feeling of being emotionally unstable from the constant screaming, watching people faint or throw up or be put in pain, the persistent pain and exhaustion, the fear invoked by some of the challenges they were put through.

Cinna finished shortly after, focused on trying to pick tree bark out of his hands silently, seeming worried about something.

"What's wrong?" she asked, even though there was no simple answer.

He just shook his head.

"—_CADETS, YOU'LL BE DOING EXERCISE SETS, DOING FIFTY PUSHUPS, FIVE LAPS AROUND THE CLEARING, FIFTY SIT-UPS, AND FIFTY ALTERNATING PLYOMETRIC LUNGES ON EACH SIDE UNTIL WE CALL TIME!_" One of the sergeants demonstrated the lunges, where you did a lunge, jumped up, and alternated leg positions while in the air, constantly repeating came, "_BEGIN NOW!"_

They did. It was as exhausting as it sounded, and Portia was really wondering how it was possible that the pain just continued to build and build. It was fairly cool out but it _felt _as if it were a thousand degrees, and she was developing a special sort of loathing for pushups. They were a stereotype but apparently a stereotype for a reason. Every single time she felt like she couldn't go back up again, her arms shaking too much.

But at the end, she didn't want to run the laps, because she was also tiring quickly of running. Her legs ached possibly the worst, and the terrain was uneven underneath her, which just jolted her around and made her even more dizzy and nauseous. It seemed like she could feel her fast heartbeats, and her headache increased when she stopped for the sit-ups, stopping just a second to pant for air more.

Those were bad, too, especially after a little while. It was at this point where again they seemed to be losing people. Yet others were being tormented by the sergeants, the screaming continuous just as usual.

The sit-ups done, she moved on to the lunges, which she was still a bit confused on. All she could figure out was that they made her feel sick and were extremely painful. But she watched what the other people were doing and it seemed to be working... until one of the sergeants came over to her and gestured for her to stop.

"_DID THAT LOOK ANYTHING LIKE WHAT WE SHOWED YOU, CADET?!"_

It was yet another one of those questions that had no good answer.

"_WELL?!" _The sergeant struck her with the cane.

Portia cringed, her hands clenching into fists. "I don't know, ma'am," she got out through gritted teeth.

The sergeant copied the lunge demonstration from earlier. "_CAN YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION NOW?!_"

It still had no good answers. "Yes, ma'am; I wasn't doing them the right way," she tried. When there was still silence, she added, "I'll do them correctly from now on."

The sergeant struck her again. "_BE SURE YOU DO!", _and she stalked off.

Portia finished the lunges, and then went back to the pushups, back to the start. And at some point later, there came, "_GET UP, CADETS! STOP! FALL IN! AT ATTENTION!"_

Portia was on the sit-ups at that point, and so for that time was happy to do as she was told.

"_TO THE LAKE, CADETS_!"

_The lake?_

As they walked, she looked over at Cinna. _"The lake?"_ she mouthed, echoing her thoughts. He shrugged. None of them knew how to swim, so what could they be doing at the lake?

They arrived there without receiving any explanation, and, looking across the lake from one of its shorter sides, Portia saw another flag at the other end. _What'll we have to do? Canoe? _She looked around, but any hints were hidden. "_YOUR GOAL IS ONCE AGAIN TO REACH THE FLAG AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE! THIS TIME, YOU'LL BE SWIMMING—!" _

"—But we're not dressed for swimming!" blurted one of the other cadets. One of the sergeants went to deal with him.

_Swimming, though? _Portia had even less of an idea of how to swim than she did of climbing or any of the other things, and that could be dangerous.

"_ALSO ONCE AGAIN, IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE LAST SEVEN TO FINISH, YOU STILL START OVER! YOU BEGIN… NOW!"_

Portia ran into the edge of the lake, the water splashing up over her from her footsteps. _Cold cold cold cold cold c-cold c-c-cold. _Her shoes didn't feel right in the water, and she tripped into the deeper part of the lake, over a drop-off. _COLD COLD C-COLD COLD C-COLD._

She flailed in the lake, getting a mouthful of salt—_well, that's rare—_water and gagging when she accidentally went under.

So the lake was deeper than expected.

She felt like she was starting to go numb, the cold water everywhere while she tried to move forward clumsily. There was nothing to push off of; she moved ahead only in short spurts. _Don't drown, don't drown, don't drown._

She found that if she moved all of her limbs back at the same time, she seemed move ahead. Her clothes clung to her uncomfortably, feeling like ice against her skin. She couldn't seem to keep her head entirely above the water, having a hard time keeping the flag in sight, getting water up her nose and in her ears, still tasting salt.

The sound of her own splashing blocked anything from the sergeants, not to mention all the water.

_Don't drown, don't drown, don't drown._

Her leg hit a plant growing from the bottom of the lake, and for a terrifying second she thought she was stuck on it, but then it was gone.

She'd made progress as far as figuring out how to swim went, and she was moving ahead slowly, still clumsily from the numbing cold, and she was just barely keeping her head above the water. She definitely didn't feel like it was too hot _now. _

Swimming hurt all of her sore muscles and was only really tiring her further—why did some people like to do this? Her heart pounded especially hard when she was at the center of the lake, trying to breathe as she went over the deepest part.

But soon, she kicked straight into the ground, the beginning of the earth, and she stumbled into something like standing, emerging onto the shore, coughing up salt water violently, and she fell to her knees, hands burying in the sane, before she threw up all over it as the second person finished behind her. For a few seconds she let herself catch her breath.

She noticed that there were some sergeants missing from the line at the end of the lake, at the flag—they were on the side, with one of the other cadets that she didn't recognize, who was… asleep? Perhaps they'd fainted? They were definitely unconscious, and she heard shouting, but then she realized—_not unconscious. Dead._

Realizing it, she threw up again. Finally, she forced herself to her feet. Someone had actually died? They'd actually had a failed rescue attempt for someone who really needed it?

She nervously tried to wring out the fabric of her uniform, which was heavy and soaked. _You'd think these would be waterproof, _she thought.

… Dead?

She shivered in the open air, colder now than before.

Cinna emerged from the lake. "What happened?" he asked, gesturing to the commotion on the side. She told him.

"Oh," was all he said, quietly.

When everyone had finished, they were ordered to go to lunch just as yesterday, with no announcement. Some rushed over to the late cadet, but otherwise, they were off to lunch.

_Get used to being in danger, _chided a small part of her mind. _Get used to the death._

When she and Cinna arrived in the dining hall, she still felt sick. And cold. So cold. They were just not dripping wet, and Cinna's mother raised an eyebrow at them when they arrived. "Swimming day?" she asked.

They nodded grimly. "Also tree-climbing," said Cinna.

As they sat, Portia blurted out, "Someone died!", and then went into an odd state of panic while Cinna explained what had happened.

The two mothers and Cinna's father talked about it, while Cinna went to get his lunch tray. Portia shook her head when he got up and looked at her. "I can't eat," she whispered, and he just nodded.

While he was gone, her father looked over the table at her. "I need to talk to you," he said, apart from the other conversation.

_Oh?_

He stood, moving off to the side of the dining hall, gesturing for her to follow, and she did.

_I'm tired of "always doing things wrong", _she thought.

"I heard you talked back to a sergeant in training this morning," he said.

_So that's what this is about. _"Yes, sir," she whispered, and then felt the need to add, "I've already been punished for it. And I have detention tonight."

"Would you like to explain _why _you were talking back?"

"I don't know, sir." She looked at the ground, fidgeting with her hands behind her back. It had been a long morning.

"Did you apologize?"

"Yes, sir."

After a moment, her father just said, "I don't want you to be disrespecting anyone in or outside of training for _any_ reason, understood?"

"Yes, sir." She swallowed.

"Good." He gestured for her to follow him back to the table, and she did, sitting beside Cinna, who had returned. He put an arm lightly around her shoulders as a comforting gesture. She sighed, and noticed for the first time that Cinna had looked a bit pale since the incident just a bit earlier. She couldn't imagine what she looked like, herself.

Everyone around her ate, and the adults talked, but she just mostly stared down at her hands.

Lunch seemed to take forever.

Eventually, though, the trays were returned, and the bell tolled, and soon they were back in training.

The afternoon was strange, and a blur in Portia's mind. They were ordered outside, into formation, at attention, and then they were made to stand very, very still. To not move a muscle, to not make a sound. That was it.

And at first, it was the most relief Portia had felt all day. But then the sun started to get into her eyes. Then the breeze started to make a strand of her hair come loose and tickle her face. Then she felt as if she had to sneeze, then cough, and felt as if she were going to lose her balance, her joints feeling stuck. Then her arm itched. Then a fly landed on her leg.

And she started to slowly, slowly feel more and more like she was going out of her mind.

They seemed to be there forever, too. She wanted more than anything to block the sun, to fix her hair, to be able to sneeze and cough, to readjust her balance, to scratch her arm, to swat the fly. Her legs started to actually hurt more. She was restless, feeling the urge to just move at all.

She thought she was going a bit cross-eyed from just staring ahead, especially with the sun. But anyone who so much as blinked noticeably was caned. And still not allowed to move an inch, nor any of the others at the sound.

Portia desperately wanted to watch the time, but she wasn't able to. She could see the position of her shadow shifting against the ground, against the mud they stood in. Now it felt very, very hot outside. _Unbearably_ hot, and she couldn't wipe away the sweat.

And that was the whole afternoon. The unexpected torture of the whole afternoon. Four hours of sun, stillness, silence, pain, and timelessness.

Then they were ordered into Lecture.

Portia had never been so relieved or grateful to be able to move and speak in her entire life. Even though the Lecture was much the same as yesterday—just screamed insults.

"_YOU CAN'T EVEN JUST DO NOTHING FOR FOUR HOURS?! WE GIVE YOU A _BREAK,_ AND THIS IS WHAT WE GET?! YOU'RE NOT ABLE TO GET THROUGH _ANY_ OF YOUR EXERCISES?!"_

_Well, I was, _Portia thought to herself, even though they were just going to scream at her anyway, apparently. She dejectedly traced patterns on the arm of her chair. Cinna, too, seemed dispirited, although a bit less obviously.

And finally, again, they were dismissed.

.

"Sir?" Portia knocked quietly on the open door's frame at the same sergeant's office at 1900, for detention.

"Come in, cadet," said the sergeant. Again not yelling. So, again making her nervous. "Sit." He gestured to a desk and chair positioned across from his. She did so.

She expected the next thing he said to be just what she was supposed to do in detention, but instead he seemed to want to have a conversation. "I always base detention punishments on what I know about the cadet," he said. "So I looked at your file, as I usually do."

She wasn't sure how she was supposed to be reacting to this. Of course, the sergeants had their files to look at and note things in—and they did, constantly—but this was for a different use than she'd expected. "I found it interesting. You've been about the first to finish every exercise despite not being noted as athletic, and done well in them. Your grades are all perfect, and you've had nothing but good remarks on your work. And outside of your file, I noted earlier that you handled your punishment very well. All of this, and yet you don't seem to always behavefor your superiors in class_._ So my question is _why._"

People seemed to be asking her that a lot lately, and she never had the answer. So, she again said, "I don't know, sir."

"You don't seem like the type to lash out without knowing your reason."

"Well, having everyone constantly trying to emotionally break you might do that to a person," she half-snapped finally. Then she realized she'd done it again, and looked down. "I'm sorry, sir. I shouldn't have said that."

"Is it not true?"

"What, sir?"

"Is what you said true?"

"I think so, sir, yes. I just shouldn't have said it out loud."

"You're not supposed to speak the truth?"

"I suppose so, sir," she said quietly.

After a beat, the sergeant spoke. He stood and set a pen and papers on the desk in front of Portia. "You're going to write about your statement. About if you think sergeants enjoy their work even after being trained themselves. About the purpose of Basic Training on a psychological level and its needs for, as you called it, cruelty, or if it is at all, and how it all applies to actual combat in the future and through history."

The sergeant sat back at his desk. Portia just looked at him. "Is that clear?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," she whispered, wondering if he'd come to the conclusion that she'd say something again earlier, what exactly she was supposed to say in her essay.

"Then begin."

She did.

At first she wasn't sure where to even start.

But soon she felt impassioned, not worrying as much, the words flowing faster and faster about how the training was somewhat _meant _to break you, to desensitize you, about the authoritativeness of it. She found her handwriting growing poorer as the writing became oddly emotional. She found it cathartic, and she figured out a lot of her own complicated opinions along the way.

Her hand started to hurt more from writing, on the other hand, and soon it was just droning on and on. At 2130, when she had just paused to think of a new specific topic, the sergeant said, "Stop," and she did. He stood, walked around the desk, picked up her papers and the pen, went back to his desk, sat, and read.

Portia felt almost embarrassed having to watch him read it, and nervous about his reaction. She tried to not fidget too much.

"Also interesting," he said, when it was 2200, having finished reading. "That will be all. You're dismissed."

Portia had expected him to say something more, but she didn't want to comment on it. "Thank you, sir," was all she said, and then left the room for the night.


End file.
